10 World-Changing Inventions People Thought Were Useless

5. Cinema

"The cinema is little more than a fad. It's canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage."Charlie Chaplin, actor, producer, director, and studio founder, 1916

Well, it just goes to show that even the best of us can get it wrong sometimes. The bizarre thing is that Chaplin made that statement two years after appearing in his first film, Making a Living, which he is said to have hated.

In a world dominated by theatre, the idea of cinema seemed like a watered down version, until filmmakers turned it into an artform in its own right. Cinema had shaky beginnings, as notorious a**hole Thomas Edison owned nearly all of the patents involved in the process, almost killing it in the crib by forcing early filmmakers to either work with him or meet him in court.

But, once the industry was established, it was wildly successful. Then, the shocking developments in sound recording meant that we would be able to hear the actors' voices for the first time. This was obviously a disaster as, after all:

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"H. M. Warner, co-founder of Warner Brothers, 1927